Back On My Mac, no .Mac

One Mac user has cleverly figured out a way to deliver Leopard's "Back on my Mac" feature without using Apple's subscription-based .Mac service. Apple's new Leopard operating system introduced a new feature called "Back on My Mac" that allows .Mac subscribers to retrieve files from from their Mac from any remote remote location; however, the feature requires a subscription to Apple's .Mac web service, which provides email, internet disk storeage and other integrated functions to the Mac desktop; it costs $100 per year. All Forces has outlined an alternate method of accessing a remote Mac using Leopard's advanced iChat, thereby circumventing Apple's .Mac requirement.

The "back door" utilizes two iChat accounts and a slight modification to an auto-accept script. The workaround requires decent knowledge of iChat's functions and scripting, but once the setup is complete, it works without any advanced knowledge.

The first step in the process is to limit which users will have access to the desktop, through iChat's 'Accounts' preference panel. If the permissions are not set, then a user will create an open door for anyone who has ready access to that user's iChat handle. Once the definitions are in place, the necessary script – Auto Accept.applescript – must be selected in iChat's 'Alerts' preference pane. The user is then required to modify the contents of the script, located in Macintosh HD/Library/Scripts/iChat/, and nullify part of the script using the AppleScript utility.

After saving the script, the user needs to ensure that the computer remains active for the period of time that is required, which is done by disabling the sleep functionality through the Energy Saver System Preference pane. Once this is complete, the last step required is to initiate the screen sharing session from the second computer, as all of the previous steps will enable iChat to automatically start the screen sharing session.

by MacNN Staff